Actually, no one except Vida has any idea what Mrs. Williams thinks about Vida and her children, let alone about the revolution and its leader. The church has one idea, Mrs. Williams another about some things. Vida knows that. Mrs. Williams said as much. A breeze was blowing in the window, filling up the white curtains that swell like clouds into the room, and time was swinging back and forth, the curtain so much like the white lace that hung in Vida’s dining room in the old house where she had grown up, curtains that swelled like clouds until her own mother went over and tied a knot, and Vida sat amazed to see Mrs. Williams do just what her own mother had done, to tie up a cloud. Vida understood, while Arthur would draw her attention back to Raymond sitting there at the table, Arthur scolding him, teasing the head of state, even in front of the children.
– Your manners are worse than the babies’. Wait your turn. Mary, take your time there … You’ll choke on your cake if you run with it in your mouth… It will catch in your throat… Listen, Mary, in such a hurry… Remember, home isn’t the place you stop by at; it’s the place you’re coming from…
The cake was warm and wet in their mouths. This part is history, but life is not just memory.